A document may be a word processing file, a presentation file, a Portable Document Format (PDF) file, or other type of file. Typically, a search engine may query one or more indices to find documents which include one or more particular words. If at least one document is found, which includes the one or more particular words, the one or more indices may provide information with respect to the at least one document, as well as one or more locations at which the one or more particular words appear within the at least one document. Some search engines may maintain multiple indices with respect to words included in multiple documents such that, for example, a first index regarding popular documents may be stored in a first medium having a relatively short access time, while a second index regarding less popular documents may be stored in a second medium having a relatively longer access time.
Often, search engine queries produce no search results. However, a significant amount of processing resources may be consumed by searching one or more indices to process such queries.